Friendship and rejection

May 7, 2010

, in her recent post, said:
"It still hurts, just a little, when somebody "rejects" you, but I tell myself that this is the way the world works. You don't put any time and energy into your friends and you lose them."
Yes, I agree with what she says. Friendship is a two-way process, and one must put in one's own effort and invest in the time...and with one's friends, this is usually not anything difficult. But really good friends do understand a short period of being less involved as other matters take priority. Yes...the plant of friendship may wither without the water of attention and affection from you.
I agree with what she says...but it also happens that there are times when friends, who might have told you that they will always feel close to you, take all the affection that you have lavished on them...and then cut you out of their lives one fine day, with surgical precision, leaving you to bleed and weep, wonder what happened, and make your way out of the mental mess that your affection has got you into...they won't tell you what it is that has made them withdraw, they won't tell you what is the hurt they might have got....they don't give the friendship a chance or give you any chance to talk anything over...they just cut off, and that's it. The place they occupied is a vacuum, but they don't seem to feel it the same way.
This, too, is the way the world works..sometimes. One may take care to let in very few people into one's heart...but yet it does happen. Trish...either way...the cuts inflicted by a friend who suddenly turns into an ex-friend...run deep...especially because, as you have discovered, YOU don't stop caring for that friend who's a friend no more.
With great difficulty, I've started resuscitating one such friendship; it took me three months of effort to get to the person, get a response, ask what happened, examine what I'd done wrong, and try and set it right. Things are not totally comfortable yet.... they may never be....but in my book, every friendship that I form, every person that I deem a friend, is worth keeping at any cost or effort.
I could never carry out this kind of terminal surgery on anyone whom I call a friend...I just cannot cut them out of my life just like that. I will never be able to do this, but I'll have to learn how to deal with it when someone takes this route. Thank goodness, it doesn't happen often.